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Toronto Maple Leafs: Andersen Not as Bad as He Seems

By James Tanner

TORONTO, ON- SEPTEMBER 25 - Toronto Maple Leafs goalie Frederik Andersen (31) during a break in play as the Toronto Maple Leafs play the Montreal Canadiens in NHL pre-season action at the Ricoh Coliseum in Toronto. September 25, 2017. (Steve Russell/Toronto Star via Getty Images)
TORONTO, ON- SEPTEMBER 25 - Toronto Maple Leafs goalie Frederik Andersen (31) during a break in play as the Toronto Maple Leafs play the Montreal Canadiens in NHL pre-season action at the Ricoh Coliseum in Toronto. September 25, 2017. (Steve Russell/Toronto Star via Getty Images) /
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The Toronto Maple Leafs are 7-3-0, and you couldn’t ask for a better start to the season.

People are talking about Frederik Andersen’s rough start to the season and I sympathize.   As I pointed out the other day in this piece about Mitch Marner trade talk (which is absurd and silly) things in Toronto tend to get crazy, overblown and hyperbolic rather quickly.

The sheer amount of daily mainstream and non-mainstream articles, the non-stop TV and radio focus, the media scrums, press conferences, and whatever else about the Toronto Maple Leafs is probably equal to the amount that exists for all 30 other teams combined.  This has the effect of magnifying everything and making it seem more important/urgent or even more widespread than it could possibly be.

In that light, I think it’s worth pointing out that while goalie Frederik Andersen has not been great so far, he probably hasn’t been as bad as you think.

Andersen So Far

Frederik Andersen has, at times, seemed awful so far this season. The Leafs are not a great defensive team, but they also aren’t horrible.  Doesn’t matter. Even if they were worse, an 89% save percentage is unacceptable.  An NHL goalie needs to post a higher save percentage,  regardless of the team in front of him.

Andersen has played nine games.  In four of those he allowed either five or six goals.  In six of nine starts, Andersen has allowed at least three goals.  Also unacceptable.  You can’t win in the NHL regularly if you need to score four to win every night.  Not in this era of hockey were it’s just too hard to score.

The Good News

The good news is that this all seems to be worse than it actually is.

One way to tell if a goalie is getting lucky or playing well is to look at his save percentage on low-danger shots.  The theory – based on low, mid,and high danger shots – is that if a goalie’s save percentage on high danger shots is high, they are likely playing well even if their overall save percentage is low.

Low Danger shots are very easy for NHL goalies to save.  They are almost automatic, and definitely routine.  So if a goalie has a low save percentage on easy shots, the odds are he’s just getting unlucky.  Pucks taking weird bounces, screen shots, losing site of the puck etc. Almost all goals you’d consider to be ‘bad’ are like this.

Now, obviously it’s not all luck.  Some of these are just the goalie letting in crap goals.  But one way to tell the difference is to compare low-danger to high-danger.  If he’s bad at both, he probably is just bad.  But if he’s stopping more (relatively speaking) high-danger shots, he could just be getting bad bounces.

So far this season, Andersen is ranked 38th in low-danger save percentage out of 40 goalies who have played at least 200 minutes.  That is terrible and suggest he’s letting in a lot of saveable shots.

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Andersen’s high-danger save percentage is a bit better, however, and he’s ranked 20th out of the 40 qualified goalies. This is, I would say, pretty good news.  If he was ranked 1st here, we could say with 100% certainty that he was just getting unlucky.  20th is a little trickier.  Still, I’d say its a definite indication that he’s getting unlucky since he’s gone from the worst to the middle of the pack.

If he’s making tough saves, and letting in easy ones, you know that is almost certain to correct itself.  Much like a player shooting well below the league average in shooting-percentage, a goalie who is allowing a bunch of easy goals (as long as he’s an NHL goalie) is extremely likely to revert back to the league average over time.

Basically, this is great news for Leafs fans.  There is no real cause for concern with Frederik Andersen.  He needs to play better (I’d like to see him minimum 15th on HD S%) but he also isn’t playing as badly as the raw numbers indicate.

Next: Marlies Notebook

If 7-3 is the record the Toronto Maple Leafs put up with bad goaltending, I’d like to see what they can do once Andersen finds his game and starts getting a bit luckier.

stats from naturalstattrick.com and corsica.hockey

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